" It turned out the HR department decided I had encroached on her critical job of editing inter-departmental emails "

If editing emails is your critical job then you don't have enough to do.

Isn't that the very definition of HR?

No.

The definition of HR is to be the employer's friend. They exist to make the company "happy" while simultaneously trying to be the employee's "friend".

No. HR exists to protect the company from the employees.

I'll get me coat

Micro-managers gonna micro-manage

Icon: where's my magnification glass, I need to see the manager

Micromanagement is so destructive.

I once worked at a certain large manufacturer or turbine engines in Derby. The lead architect was that very toxic combination of being a sociopath, a micromanager and a hoarder of key information who then took delight in making you basically beg to get said information out of him, lording it over you like a prize to be earned.

In order to get firewall ports opened you had to complete a firewall request form. For 18 months he'd done them as he'd set up all the firewall infrastructure, so if you gave the inbound, outbound ports, protocols etc he knew the correct FW's to traverse.

Notwithstanding he was a single point of failure, often took too long due to workload* it did generally work.

Until I sent him a request at which point, he shouted at me in an open plan office, calling me an idiot and don't I read emails from him?

Turns out he'd had some kind of epiphany and sent an email telling people to do the forms themselves. Except he didn't cc me in. Which then became my fault for not knowing to ask my colleagues...

After 18 months of this kind thing, I flipped. To be so rude in front of colleagues, and the customer was the straw that broke the camels back. For the first and only time in my career I lost my shit with him and told him if he didn't apologise for his fuck up I'd beat the fuck out of him and I meant it. After a few muttered excuses I made a point of making him apologise as loudly as he'd called me an idiot.

I left almost immediately afterwards. Two months after leaving he was asking me to go back. Fuck no.

The cunt still sends me an occasional request to connect on LinkedIn.

*He was proud of the fact he worked 7am to 11pm each day despite being a contractor. You could pack a week's worth of luggage in the bags under each eye.

Sounds like my first job (and I think I've mentioned this before) where I'd got my hands on a DEC Alpha and LN03 laser printer so could do rudimentary word processing and print out the result - to put in the internal email to the typing department who'd return it three days later with added typos.

I recall around DEC OSF/1 3.0g there there was Wordperfect (4.2?) for Unix on one of the the Associated Products CD so possibly not so rudimentary.

Wordperfect actually ported to Unix which then formed the codebase for all platforms. There was an article in DDJ by one of team that discuss the problems and the benefits of the porting effort on the quality of code.

I still have a license key and CDs for the Linux version which was actually fairly good twenty plus years ago but more of a vi + troff person never I really used it.

Did your Alpha not have the Extensible VAX Editor? You could do more than just rudimentary word processing with that.

While EVE was indeed all kinds of awesome, DEC did have a basic word processor, which remains one of the best I have ever used - not bad for a terminal-based WP...

Shirley you know that in business no good deed goes unpunished.

I used to do a Friday Funny email at a previous workplace. It was a rather harmless "X said something funny" kind of thing, if there was anything that had happened worth telling that week.

It got a good reaction and people enjoyed it.

I stopped because after a change in management people with absolutely zero sense of humour clearly didn't want a single non-business email being sent whatsoever.

The same people who stopped a trade magazine subscription that was put in the staffroom, who took a television out of the break room, who turned Christmas lunch from an amazing community event with everyone dying to go to it (crammed in against each other elbow to elbow), in lovely surroundings, with great food, party games, music etc. into "there's a chip van in the yard, you only get something if you pre-booked on Google Sheets", the same people who basically destroyed any sense of humanity in the place. The same people who literally told me off as a manager repeatedly because - on their/our break! - a cleaner would come to our office by choice because he loved socialising with us. They literally tried to dictate who could come have a cup of tea with us when we were all on break. (I responded appropriately to this, which consisted of building that small 3-person quick tea into a gathering of 5-6 people including some senior management and utterly ignoring the repeated instructions to disband it). Oh, and that's not forgetting all getting invited to a huge posh "glad-handing" event with clients, on a Saturday, where they were charging £150 per head. Including staff. Yes, charging staff. Some of whom they said attendance was compulsory. And then they stuck ALL the staff on a table out the back where they couldn't be seen, and made them clear up after everyone had gone.

Oh, or the time that someone was leaving and NOBODY liked them (and they'd only been there five minutes) but the employer told everyone that they were going to take £10 out of their salaries to pay for that person's leaving gift and it was "opt-out" not "opt-in". Literally everyone opted-out. Sorry, but you're an employer. Why don't YOU put £10 into a budget every year for each employee so that you can afford to buy them a leaving gift when they go.

Oh, and the time they literally HIJACKED a social event that I created because THEIR social event was entirely unplanned and they only realised when they didn't have time to plan it, and my little "gang" (as they were referred to) had decided weeks before that we really didn't want to be part of their nonsense so we organised our own private thing instead. And then they literally invited the staff to it. They invited everyone to OUR private event. And *then* complained when it wasn't what they wanted it to be and that I shouldn't be allowed to organise "next year". Don't worry! I didn't organise THIS year. Not for you guys, anyway!

Oh, and the time their longest-running member of staff retired and they literally couldn't be bothered to give them a decent leaving gift so they tried to hijack our leaving gift (we'd had film photos taken and developed of the entire workplace - not easy in this day and age! - and spoken to the person to get all their memories and take photos of all the people they liked, and all the places those stories took place, etc. and had it artfully presented). I told them to get lost... they weren't hijacking our PERSONAL gift to this specific person. I literally withheld our gift until after they'd done their little leaving do. Which was a dozen people, most of whom didn't know the person, a quick drink, presented her with a glass bowl (found in a cellar as an unwanted gift that they'd tried to give one of the previous bosses years earlier), and then everyone back to work.

And then they had the cheek to repeatedly complain that nobody was willing to attend social events, that the friendly culture of the place was disappearing, that people weren't networking enough, people where going home at the exact time their shift ended, etc. etc. etc.

I've honestly never seen a friendly work culture so meticulously dismantled piece-by-piece and then the result complained about.

And relax!

longest-running member of staff retired

I had one at a previous employer. I'd been brought in as IS Manager over the existing DP manager who'd been there a long time and couldn't cope with changing technology (he maintained manual stock cards for printer cartridges!) A few years later he decided to semi-retire and take on the evening operator role, which suited me; he was offered the choice of a retirement "do" then or later when he fully finished and opted for the latter.

Roll on another few years and there was a round of redundancies to meet a corporate target so it seemed a good time for him to take his retirement with an added redundancy payoff. When I enquired about the promised leaving do I was informed that, "The company does not provide recognition for people who're made redundant!" On the same day he left, with a very brief presentation ceremony and gift that a few of us had organised and paid for, there was an official company event, with free champagne and nibbles, for someone who'd been offered a role with the corporate in the US. I was asked why I didn't attend the latter - my response was fairly blunt.

It's an old saying: Some people brighten a room when they enter, others when they leave.

No prizes for guessing who become the best bosses. I've worked for both types. Now which companies were the more successful?

" Some people brighten a room when they enter, others when they leave. "

Only take a can of kerosene to level that up. If only....

... I once sent a rather steamy love letter to my Boss, and a system status report to my girlfriend (now Wife).

Thankfully, they both found it hysterical. No harm, no foul. An extra pint that evening helped.

Fortunate otherwise you might now be married to your boss.

A sense of humour and of perspective makes life more pleasant for everyone.

Although if I were your boss the temptation to occasionally quote a particularly soppy but SFW line from your steamy missive might prove irresistible.

It's a dumb thing to send an email "Subject: Here's my CV" from a work account. I know someone who did. But you absolutely must then check that To: address. Sending it to recruitment.co,uk may look OK. But did you see the comma there? I bet you noticed the email bounce from "recruitment.co" and then realised that the "uk" part of the mangled address has gone to the company email alias that is everyone in the UK. At least your CV was all ready to go.

I once handed a stack of documents to my boss to address a client escalation, what I failed to realise was that stack also included a copy of my CV and notes I had prepared for an interview. We sat through a 2 hour conference call, each referring to our documents. It was only at the end of the call that he passed me my CV and interview notes back, and asked me why I wanted to leave. We had probably the most open conversation we ever had, my role changed to something better, and I stayed on. Positive result from a situation that could have gone the other way!